THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY IN CAIRO
FORCED MIGRATION AND REFUGEE STUDIES PROGRAM

Short Course 2002-2003

Ethical Issues in Humanitarian Assistance

Course description:
The course will provide the opportunity to reflect on the underlying ethical
issues that motivate and legitimize humanitarian interventions in crisis
situations. It will present and analyze the literature on some of the key
themes as articulated in contemporary debates about the limits of
'humanitarianism'.  These include:
a) the relation between the adoption of particular concepts in the
description of the phenomena under consideration (e.g. 'conflict' instead of
'war', or 'famine' instead of 'complex political emergencies');
b) the implications of these terms in the context of aid agency mandates
that determine what aid agencies can legitimately claim to do in crisis
situations; and
c) the financial constraints that impose practical restrictions on the
implementation of the binding principles enshrined in international
conventions and human rights documents.
It will also focus on the analysis of particular case studies of conflict
situations including Afghanistan, Bosnia, northern Iraq, Sudan, and Rwanda.

Instructors: Dr. E. Voutira, Dr. Hania Sholkamy, Mr. Nicholas Stockton and
Ms. Maggie Zanger

Dr. Eftihia Voutira is Associate Professor in the Anthropology of Forced
Migration at the Department of Balkan, Slavonic and Oriental Studies,
University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece and Research Associate at the
School of Geography, University of Oxford. She studied Philosophy (Harvard
University) and Social Anthropology (University of Cambridge). From
1993-1998 she was Research Officer at the Refugee Studies Programme and the
School of Geography, University of Oxford.  She has published extensively on
the Greek Diaspora in the former Soviet Union, refugee issues in Eastern
Europe and Africa, particularly on repatriation and social integration as
well as the political economy of humanitarian assistance. She is the author
of Conflict Resolution: A Cautionary Tale (Uppsala, Sweden:  Nordiska
Afrikainstitutet 1995), Improving Social and Gender Planning in Humanitarian
Emergencies (Refugee Studies Programme, University of Oxford/ World Food
Programme, Rome 1995), Anthropology in International Humanitarian
Emergencies (with Jean Benoist; European Commission, Brussels, Network on
Humanitarian Assistance (NOHA) July 1994, 2nd edition, 1998), and The Right
to Return and the Meaning of 'Home', (Berghahn, Oxford, forthcoming).

Dr. Hania Sholkamy is a medical anthropologist who studied at the American
University in Cairo and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1997 at the London School of
Economics and Political Science. She has undertaken extensive fieldwork in
Egypt and has experience of working with victims of war in the Sudan and in
Iraq. She specializes in health and gender issues with special expertise in
working with children. She has published on women's health perceptions, the
culture of biomedical instruction and clinical practices, kinship and child
rearing in Upper Egypt and on various aspects of rural life. She has also
worked extensively in the field of training and capacity building with NGO's
and policy makers. She has taught anthropology at the American University in
Cairo in 1989 and 2000-2002. From 1995-98 she was the Ioma Evans Pritchard
Junior Research Fellow, St. Anne's College, University of Oxford. A member
of the Oxford Group Women and Medicine, she is a founding member of the
Reproductive Health Working Group and the Arab Forum for Social Science and
Medicine. She served on the Anthropology and Demography Committee of the
International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (1998-2002) and
was an associate in reproductive health at the Population Council
(1997-2001).

Mr. Nicholas Stockton has worked in the international aid system for over 25
years. He taught at the Malawi University (1976-80) and then represented
Oxfam GB in Southern Sudan and Uganda. He also served as Oxfam's Emergencies
Coordinator, Emergencies Director and Deputy International Director.  In
1994 he arrived by chance in Goma as almost a million refugees crossed the
border from Rwanda and took charge of Oxfam' s biggest ever-emergency water
supply programme. He has served the Sphere Project's Humanitarian Charter
and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response and the Humanitarian
Accountability Project. He has written extensively on humanitarian and
development policy and management issues and was a member of the Strategic
Framework Mission for Afghanistan in 1997. He has conducted studies of
strategic coordination of international assistance for Afghanistan, and of
the political and humanitarian elements of the United Nations work in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, to be published by the Centre for
Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva.

Ms. Maggy Zanger is a lecturer in the department of Journalism and Mass
Communication at the American University in Cairo, where she teaches, among
other courses, a graduate class in Media Coverage of International
Humanitarian Crises. Her research interests focus generally on the nexus
between conflict, forced migration and the news media, and specifically on
ethnic cleansing in Iraq and the development of the Kurdish media in
northern Iraq. She has a master's degree in law from Yale Law School and a
master's in journalism from the University of Arizona and has worked as a
journalist since 1984. She is former assistant editor of Middle East Report
magazine and former publications coordinator at the Centre for Contemporary
Arab Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.


The tuition fee for a course is US $100 for international participants and
LE 50 for Egyptians and refugees.  All dates are provisional and subject to
change.
Deadline for Applications is December 15.

Applications (curriculum vitae and letter of application) should be sent to
the following address, mentioning Short Course Application in the subject
heading:

Ms. Alia Arafa
Program Administrator
Forced Migration and Refugee Studies
American University in Cairo

Tel: (202) 7976626
Fax (202) 7976629
Email: [log in to unmask]

For further information and updates on FMRS up-coming events access:
www.aucegypt.edu/academic/fmrs

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